Pioneering fruit family defenders of farmland

The Talbott family has been growing fruit in the shadow of the Grand Mesa since 1907 and has faced down many foes to stay in business.

By Candace KrebsContributing Writer

COLORADO SPRINGS — Two April freezes diminished the fruit harvest this year on the Western Slope, forcing many of the region's farm families to tighten their belts.

"We're just hoping to pay our bills," said Harry Talbott, the patriarch of Talbott Farms, a fifth generation orchard and vineyard responsible for producing roughly 60 percent of the state's commercial peaches and about 15 percent of its wine grapes.

"I guess we'll eat beans and not go to Costa Rica this year," he joked.Normally, the unique microclimate in Western Colorado's Grand Valley is ideal for growing those famous Palisade peaches, as well as wine grapes, apples and other fruits, creating a flourishing landscape captivating in its beauty. But this remarkably fertile agricultural niche is also a fragile one.

The Talbott family has been growing fruit in the shadow of the Grand Mesa since 1907 and has faced down many foes to stay in business. Chronic labor shortages have been a problem since 1964, when the U.S. ended its popular bracero program, which offered temporary work contracts to Mexican laborers. Food safety regulations and third party audits have become more rigorous and costly, especially following the 2011 listeria outbreak in cantaloupe that Talbott still considers a highly suspicious incident.

Finding workable solutions is often difficult, if not impossible. But when developers began subdividing the Grand Valley several decades ago, Talbott seized on an answer that also made him a pioneer in the area of agricultural land preservation.

"One of our biggest pressures was developers coming up to us and saying, 'We're going to develop all of this land, and it doesn't matter what you do,' he recalled. "It was a form of war. It made enemies out of neighbors."

Talbott had a steely resolve to make sure farmers had some leverage against them.

In 1980, he helped found the Mesa Land Trust, a private entity focused on protecting agricultural land, an approach that was slow to catch on but gradually won over the locals as they grew to appreciate it was a nongovernmental, locally driven effort.

"In the late 1970s, we tried all kinds of things — planning committees, governor's boards and commissions. These things don't work because you're facing the giants," Talbott said. "We were just a little land trust. But people began realizing this was something they could support. We went from pariahs to visionaries. Vindication is a wonderful word."

Talbott was recognized for his efforts recently by the Palmer Land Trust, which holds conservation easements on 75,000 acres across South Central Colorado. He received the group's annual Friend of Open Space Award.

Talbott is as leery as anyone of governmental over-reach. He blames the creation of special tax districts, which generate ad valorem revenue used to build roads and sewer systems, as one of the culprits behind urban development that invades rural areas and leads to conflict.

"Urban and rural are not compatible," he said simply.

He has also been forced to tangle with the Internal Revenue Service, which he said has been reluctant to embrace the land trust concept. Talbott said he stood firm against at least three IRS legal challenges and won them all.

By banding together with other farmers in the region to establish a landowner-managed land trust, he believes they finally found a remedy that allowed them to invest in the future, including some of the impressive mechanization he uses in his own orchard. In addition to growing fruit on 400 owned and leased acres, the Talbott family packs for other local growers and processes 8 million pounds of apples a year into cider, a product sold by the leading grocery chains. Families like his have also been able to bring the next generation into their businesses.

One-third of Mesa County's orchards — including 100 square miles of uniquely scenic land comprising more than 45 family farms — are now protected from development by the trust. The region is still going strong, producing 25 million pounds of peaches a year.

In fact, a reversal of fortunes is evident. An estimated 80,000 new peach trees have been planted in the last two years alone, according to Rob Bleiberg, the executive director of the Mesa Land Trust since 1996.

He was thrilled to see the Talbotts recognized. "They've had their shoulders to the wheel for a long time," he said. "That's what it takes."

Talbott will still have to figure out how to manage his budget after producing less fruit than normal, but he's pleased to do it without developers breathing down his neck.

"When you put a trust on your land, you can focus on how to run your business better," he said.